Projecting The Economic Gains Of Nationwide Carbon Pricing

The Analysis Group released the report The Economic Impacts of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on Ten Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States. It is a study of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative agreement between Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Findings included regional economic gains of more than $1.6 billion and 16,000 new jobs in the three years of the program.

The population of these 10 northeastern states is 40,494,453.

The population of the United States is 308,745,538.

(via census.gov)

Projecting the job and economic gains of carbon cap and trade for these 10 states to the United States as a whole gives (over three years):

-105,990 jobs created

-more than $10 billion in economic gain

For comparison, the Keystone XL Pipeline which is in the news has been projected by the Cornell Global Labor Institute to eliminate more jobs than it will create.

[original news item via ThinkProgress]

I Don't Think This Is A Good Thing

A large influx of freshwater into the ocean can turn off ocean currents which halts the transfer of heat from the equator to the poles. (See Shutdown of thermohaline circulation)

UCIrvine: 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.

[Via Juan Cole]

Does Anyone In Utah Find This Ironic?

recently in the news, the state of Utah is considering less education:

Utah Eyes Cutting 12th Grade To Save $60M

and so it is not a surprise that this leads to wackiness:

House Resolution Passed in Utah: Climate Change a Conspiracy

Why Scientists Refer To Climate Instability, Not Global Warming

A couple of examples. The U.K. has been covered in snow this month because the North Atlantic Current has shifted away from transporting heat from the equator to northern Europe. See: Freak Current Takes Gulf Stream to Greenland

Two, from GCC: Global Ice Age Climate Patterns Influenced by Bering Strait

Wired Has An Interview With An Expert On Climate Change Denial

Wired: The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

Thoughts On Climategate

Lots of summary at TheAtlantic: ClimateGate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data and BoingBoing: More Insight on Those Leaked Climate Change Emails

My thinking is this:
- this is one data set of many
- climate based observations (e.g., sea ice extent, sea level rise, mtn glaciers, species movement, etc) all point to climate change
- based on source code comments the predictive climate computer model has serious problems
- this "scandal" demonstrates why open data and open source software are so important
- it is odd that the climate change deniers who are hyping Climategate are generally the same people who have been silent on the much more troubling problems with electronic voting machine software

The Gulf Stream Current Is Very Sensitive

When the North Atlantic current that transports heat from the equator to the northern hemisphere gets turned off the heat gets shut off quickly too.

See NS: Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months

Uh Oh

Maybe if we ignore it it will go away?

Not sure how else to explain the lack of attention to this news from NOAA:

"Recent observations have suggested that the air above Alaska may already hold the first signs of a regional increase in greenhouse gas emissions that could contribute to climate change around the globe."

See: NOAA, Coast Guard Hunt for Alaska Methane, Carbon Dioxide Sources

Just as I posted last year: Game Over Man...

Reality Versus The Republicans

My Congressman, Dave Camp, is against Cap and Trade:
Every American Will Pay Energy Taxes

FactCheck.org debunks the GOP arguments: True or false? Carbon regulation will cost you $3,100

And meanwhile things keep warming up. See Ars: Government report: climate change here, mitigation needed now

The US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report that looks at the effects that global climate change will have on the United States. Entitled Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, it draws material from 13 US government science agencies. The report is meant to be one that can be used by anyone—policymakers, school teachers, and people in industry and business. Eschewing the scientific terminology that is omnipresent in peer-reviewed science, the report uses everyday language to describe the effects that global climate change will have on various parts of the US and what can be done to minimize those risks. In general, its authors' conclusion is that the earlier we start changing, the less severe and shorter-lived the final impact of climate change will be.

This report is not out to rehash old arguments about the issue, as its opening sentences demonstrate: "Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases." From there on out, the report focuses primarily on what will happen in the United States while highlighting current and potential responses to these changes.

Isostatic Rebound

Not just words that sound great together, but a geological process that has been happening in the Great Lakes region since the last glaciers retreated.

Now Alaska gets to experience it too.

See NYT: As Alaska Glaciers Melt, It’s Land That’s Rising

More information at Wikipedia.

Geoengineering And Iron

I first learned about the Iron Hypothesis in Earth Magazine back in 1996. This hypothesis has been tested, and as usual, nature is more complex than we can imagine. See PhysOrg: Ocean carbon: A dent in the iron hypothesis

...study reveals that most of the carbon from lush plankton blooms never reaches the deep ocean.

The results are interesting because fertilizing the oceans with iron in order to sequester carbon is a geoengineering idea, and the White House science adviser has not taken geoengineering off the table. See NYT: Science Adviser Lays Out Climate and Energy Plans

Alaskan Eskimo Village Forced To Move

Hey Alaskans - "You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality" -Ayn Rand

Via CNN: 'Climate change' forces Eskimos to abandon village

Take That Ice Age

Study: Did Early Climate Impact Divert A New Glacial Age?

Using three different climate models and removing the amount of greenhouse gases humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 to 8,000 years, Vavrus and Kutzbach observed more permanent snow and ice cover in regions of Canada, Siberia, Greenland and the Rocky Mountains, all known to be seed regions for glaciers from previous ice ages. Vavrus notes: "With every feedback we've included, it seems to support the hypothesis (of a forestalled ice age) even more. We keep getting the same answer."

Update 1/7/2009
New World post-pandemic reforestation helped start Little Ice Age

Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands-abandoned as the population collapsed-pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.

Game Over Man...

If this "methane leak" is confirmed and expands then the current crisis will seem quaint.

See: The methane time bomb

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Another Myth Is Busted

PhysOrg reports that sites that were originally referred to as "Forts" by William Henry Harrison were actually water works designed to cope with post-glacial climate change.

See: Revising and re-sizing history: New work shows Ohio site to be an ancient water works, not a fort

The site known as Miami Fort is no fort at all, and it is also much larger than previously believed – so large, in fact, that its berms stretch to almost six kilometers in length, making it twice as large as any other Native American earthworks in Ohio, and one of the largest in the nation.

Old Growth News

Via Treehugger - Old-Growth Forests in New York State Protected Under New Legislation

Via Discover - Want to Capture Carbon? Protect Old Trees

The new study suggests that protecting old growth forests may be just as important as planting new trees in efforts to reduce carbon dioxide levels and fight global warming.

Science Mini-links

Swedish researchers confirm Siberian seabead methane leak

Strongest Storms Grow Stronger Yet, Study Says

Obama Answers Science Questions
"This is the first time we know of that a candidate for president has laid out his science policy before the election at this level of detail"

Testing Forest Diversity As A Carbon Sink

Near Pellston, OSU and U of M researchers are slowly killing aspen trees in the hope they'll be replaced by maple, beech, oak, and pine. See:
U-M scientists remove thousands of aspens to glimpse forest's future (includes video)

The UMBS Forest Carbon Cycle Research Program

Aspen trees starved in global warming experiment

"We've been managing forests for lumber or pulp, or perhaps as habitat for deer or quail," said project leader Peter Curtis, an Ohio State University forest ecologist. "Many economists think that managing them for carbon will be a fact of life in the not-too-distant future."

I wonder why they didn't burn the forest in order to both clean the forest slate and create biochar which acts as a second carbon sink to the growing trees?

Malthusian

Coal, butter, rye, petrol... A once-in-awhile shortage of one commodity is an understandable market condition. Runs on several commodities simultaneously looks like a trend. This is why many experts consider this time to be different. It may be a painful decade as people are weaned off petroleum. Malthus' chickens are coming home to roost (to borrow a phrase from the news). See:

Japan tackling butter shortage amid higher raw milk prices, demand in Asia
Officials were hoping the shortage would subside with a planned price hike of the product by 8 percent to 10 percent beginning early May.

A Run on Rice in Asian Communities
...California rice farmers have begun planting this year’s crop of half a million acres, the high prices may prove only enough to cover their increased costs of fuel and fertilizer, industry officials say.

Bakers feeling pinch of short supplies
Rye flour stocks have been depleted in the United States, and by June or July there will be no more U.S. rye flour to purchase

Food price rise could last another two years
Products with the steepest retail price jumps were a 5-pound bag of flour, up 69 cents to $2.39; cheddar cheese, up 61 cents to $4.71 a pound; corn oil, up 58 cents to $3.01 a 32-ounce bottle; and dozen large eggs, up 55 cents to $2.16.

China Short Of Coal: 12-Day Reserve And Counting

Drivers are told not to panic buy as strike at oil refinery starts to bite
As the Forties pipeline - which supplies one third of the United Kingdom's oil and gas - began shutting down for the first time in its history yesterday, queues formed on forecourts in Scotland and northern England. Some petrol stations rationed supplies, while others were forced to close after running dry.

Gas and crude oil prices at GasBuddy.com:


Perhaps this summer will be the summer of hoarding as irrational conditions continue?

Past shortages and Malthusian predictions have been innovated out of, but what was happening is that the Population vs. Production graph was reset to expire at some other time in the future. This time climate change makes it different. In the end, nature wins. The energy shortages are being caused by the peaking of easily recoverable oil and it appears that a lot of the food shortages are rooted in an unprecedented drought in Australia.

Arctic News Roundup

Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave that's 71.6 F

Widening Arctic meltdown chills Canadian scientists

A Cycle of Warming Spirals in the Arctic: 2007: A Global Warming Tipping Point?

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts